It wasn't long before James Wesley came through the door.
He looked the part — briefcase in hand, the polished bearing of a high-end executive — though the irritation showed at the edges. He yanked off his tie, grabbed a beer from the shelf, and drained half of it in one go.
He moved to the desk, opened a file, skimmed it for two minutes — and then caught the figure sitting just at the edge of his peripheral vision.
"Who's there?!" He lunged for the desk drawer.
Daisy sent a shockwave into the desk before he could reach it, splitting the front panel. Then she stepped out of the shadow.
"Mr. Wesley. It's been a while." She let him see her face.
Confusion crossed his face at first — she seemed unfamiliar — and then something clicked. He looked at the ruined desk, then back at her. "You. You're enhanced?"
"No," she said simply. "Just someone with abilities. Like I told you last time, Mr. Wesley — you're too talented to waste on this."
A thin smile of contempt formed at the corner of Wesley's mouth. The look of a man who had seen too many young people discover their powers and immediately start overestimating themselves.
Daisy read it perfectly. She kept talking. "Maybe you think I'm naive. But the one who hasn't read the situation clearly is you. And behind you — the man who's currently in Spain." She paused. "Wilson Fisk."
"How do you know that?" He didn't deny it. He countered.
Through a story I watched on a screen, was the true answer. She kept the mask on. "Mr. Fisk is your closest friend. The bond you share is genuine — you'd do anything for him, and he'd kill anyone who threatened you. I'm not wrong?"
He neither confirmed nor denied. She continued. "But Mr. Fisk left New York. Left Hell's Kitchen. Because the NYPD's sweep forced him to go quiet, to wait, to rebuild before he can come back. So what about you, Mr. Wesley? Are you ready to retire to the Spanish countryside too?"
The question was rhetorical. If James Wesley had wanted to follow Fisk to Spain, he'd have gone already. He couldn't leave. He needed the deference, the influence, the rooms that went quiet when he walked in. He had no interest in pastoral tranquility.
"You've been waiting in New York — for how long? The department is running full suppression right now. How many years before Mr. Fisk can come back? Are you going to sit here the whole time, or come out and actually do something?" She held his gaze.
"I don't trust you."
Daisy smiled brightly. "You don't have a choice. You've seen what I can do — which means you're already on my side, whether you like it or not. Unless you'd rather not be alive."
She let that settle. "And even if you don't care, you don't want to bring trouble down on Mr. Fisk. Do you?" She said an address aloud — somewhere overseas.
Wesley's composure broke. "Say that again." He looked like he'd heard it wrong.
He was in the business of threats. He and his organization had always been on the delivering end: If you don't want harm to come to your loved ones, you'll do what we say. Variations of that sentence had left his mouth hundreds of times across thirty years of life. He had never, in his wildest imagination, been on the receiving end.
He almost laughed, despite himself. "I may have no leverage. But Mr. Fisk is another matter entirely."
Daisy raised one hand. She was several feet away. She pressed her focus gently on his chest — right over his heart.
An invisible force clamped around James Wesley's ribcage. The air refused to enter. He couldn't breathe. His face turned red as he gasped — mouth open, lungs working — and nothing reached his lungs. He felt the walls of his chest squeeze.
She released him.
"In my assessment, there is no 'another matter.'" She kept her tone even. "I'm not asking you to betray him. Mr. Fisk is lying low. While he's gone, you work with me — that doesn't violate your principles, does it?"
Wesley pulled off his glasses and pressed his hand to his sternum, struggling back upright. "Mr. Fisk despises people with abilities."
"That's because he isn't one." Daisy had thought about this clearly. The anti-mutant legislators, the fearful citizens, even the Kingpin's hostility toward powered individuals — take away those people's ordinariness, put a gift in their hands, and every one of them would change their tune immediately.
Wesley turned this over quietly. If he was honest, he'd always been more envious of powered individuals than hostile toward them.
"I have conditions."
"Go ahead."
"Nothing that betrays Mr. Fisk."
"What I'm building is a legitimate business. It has nothing to do with him. Agreed."
"I'm a partner, not a subordinate."
"That was always the arrangement. Agreed."
"The moment Mr. Fisk returns to New York, I walk away from you and go back to him."
Daisy pressed her lips together. She felt like Cao Cao trying to retain Guan Yu — some loyalties couldn't be purchased. But she agreed. Time had a way of eroding certainty. The Kingpin's return was years off, and the years of being the one in front would wear on James Wesley and the loyalty he was so proud of. At heart he was a man who craved visibility, admiration, and influence. Given the choice between being the face of something and operating in the background as a gangster's fixer — she was confident about which one would win.
"Fine. Since we're partners, let me tell you what we're working on."
She laid out the core concept of big data analytics.
As a genuine professional, Wesley had enough range to follow along. Within minutes he grasped its potential. It was a stroke of genius — and far more to his taste than the Kingpin's usual domain of real estate and development. He found himself genuinely interested.
He shifted into analysis mode almost immediately. "It seems like this product can only serve major corporations and government agencies."
Daisy nodded. "That's exactly what I need you for. Connecting with senior government contacts, with major executives. That's your wheelhouse — a Wharton man should have no trouble opening those doors."
She painted an appealing picture. Wesley was genuinely tempted.
Then she mentioned that the company's current balance was a few thousand dollars — and he felt the temperature in the room drop.
"Which is why I need you to open those doors," Daisy said, as if this were entirely logical. "Let the market discover the product. That's the job."
Wesley considered. "If certain targets are resistant — would you be willing to use unconventional methods?"
Daisy looked at him with amusement. "Mr. Wesley, that kind of thinking is a liability. Do you genuinely believe this country has no teeth? The top layer just chooses not to bite. If they decided to, a handful of elite operatives could wipe out everything you've ever built."
She glanced at her watch and handed him a card with an address written on it. "It's late. If you haven't changed your mind by tomorrow, come find me at this address. If you have changed your mind —" she let that hang — "then I'll come find you."
She pressed two fingers lightly against his chest, turned, and walked out the front door at a measured pace.
Seven out of ten odds he comes through, she calculated on the way down. Her vibration sense had been running the whole time — she'd felt his frequency shift from irritation, to fear, to hostility, to reluctant compliance. The arc was clean.
She pulled open the door of her secondhand Ford and had just turned the ignition when a sharp new frequency appeared at the edge of her awareness. Before she could react, the passenger door opened, and a large figure dropped into the seat.
Tall. Black leather trench coat. Eye patch over the left eye. Head to toe in black — practically absorbed the night.